Author: ubisecusr

Back in 2015, American journalist and New York Times columnist Frank Bruni wrote a passionate piece on the world of anti-vaxxers, the role the internet may be playing in our collective intelligence and humanity’s propensity to believe everything within indexing reach of a search engine:

Although the Internet could be making all of us smarter, it makes many of us stupider, because it’s not just a magnet for the curious. It’s a sinkhole for the gullible. It renders everyone an instant expert. You have a degree? Well, I did a Google search!

I’m fairly sure there has always been a proportion of our species more trusting of others, the good-hearted, happy to put faith in bold assertions, those now dubbed gullible and open to exploitation. Whether or not the internet can be shown to be making many of us ‘stupider’, it has certainly changed the playing field for the criminally minded.

The late 1970s era ‘crime triangle’ offers an easy way to visualise and understand crime problems – three things must exist in order to have a crime: an offender, a victim, and a location. Traditional crime prevention efforts looked to remove one of more aspects of the triangle to decrease the potential for harm – don’t walk through that rough neighbourhood at night and your likelihood of meeting an offender and becoming a victim is reduced. What the internet has done is turn the high risk rough neighbourhood from a known geographic location with visual warning signs to a far larger area with fewer potential clues to detect danger and take early evasive action.

Participants scored as gullible were more likely to engage with scam emails by clicking on links.

Gullibility was also associated with emotionality and a poor sense of self.

Examining emotionality more closely, “people who are naturally inclined to be more emotionally reactive are consequently more likely to be persuaded by scam material.”

This emotional reactivity can be linked to feelings of stress, anger or pain and may lead to impulsive behaviour with potential poor outcomes – the archetypal decision made in the heat of the moment. Chris Hadnagy, my favourite social engineer, has talked at length about phishers using ‘amygdala hijacking’ to trigger physiological and psychological responses before the brain has time to kick in.

Could reading your emails in a heightened ‘fight-or-flight’ state lead to poor outcomes? There are certainly links to the UK’s Take Five fraud prevention campaign which highlights the need to stop, think and challenge your initial emotional response to email and phone based deception offences.

It will be interesting to follow the work of the team in Australia and see how their Gullibility Scale develops.

Over the course of undertaking this research, it has become clear that there is significant potential to use ‘cyber psychology’ in the form of the Security Quotient scale to identify high risk individuals who may be predisposed to fall victim to common socio technical attacks like phishing and internet scams.

A simple psychometric test that also allows for demographic, health and lifestyle factors and how they may shape risk appetite and risk perception could be used to target cybercrime prevention and intervention efforts to a subset of individuals at the greatest risk of victimisation. Such efforts could deliver real harm reduction across both social and financial domains of wellbeing.

Second stage methods utilised both the psychometric scales and demographic survey response data and identified the following preliminary findings:

SeBIS, CFC-F and DOSPERT-R scale scores used to identify 11 Very High Risk individuals from 103 validated survey responses.

36% of those identified had previously suffered a financial loss due to cybercrime; all bar one had experienced a security incident.

More than half did not exercise and the remainder did significantly less than the study average (2hrs 5 mins).

Individuals who had suffered the highest number of incidents were more likely to smoke, take less exercise and not be saving towards their future.

They were also significantly younger than the survey median age at 33.8 (Millennials).

55% of smokers and 42% of those who did not invest in their future via Kiwisaver or other channels had suffered a financial loss, compared with a survey average of 21%.

50% of those unemployed and looking for work had been a victim of cybercrime and had suffered a financial loss.

Data analysis identified two groups of note – 22 ‘Victors’ and 20 ‘Victims’ based on self-reported answers to the second survey:

‘Victors’

Those who reported suffering no incidents or losses were older, predominantly female, less likely to smoke, keen investors, avidexercisers. 4% better at online safety and security practices (SeBIS) than the study average; slightly more future focused (CFC-F); 9%lower risk appetite than study average (DOSPERT-R).

‘Victims’

Those who had lost money were more likely to be smokers, not actively investing, risk takers by nature. Less confident at onlinesafety and security practices than the study average, scoring 10% below the Victors (SeBIS). Risk appetite 16% higher than the Victors(DOSPERT-R).

In summary, the first two scales offer good ‘predictive’ insights into security knowledge and ability and future focused behaviour – Very High Risk (VHR) individuals are ‘correctly’ identified to some extent as victims of cybercrime. For DOSPERT-R, there appears to be a sweet spot at the start of the High Risk band; VHR recreational risk takers identified by the DOSPERT-R scale appear to be resilient ‘Victors’. Combining the three scale scores via weighting or other means is required to produce a final Security Quotient metric.

Further statistical analysis will help validate these preliminary findings (potential linear / logistic / multinomial regression). The small sample size for the second stage survey is an issue to prove that the Security Quotient model is both valid and repeatable. A larger survey dataset is necessary to validate the concept and two large employers have now provided a further pool of responses to analyse. A larger dataset (1000+) could allow nationality to be assessed for evaluation of Hofstede cultural ‘Individualism’ also being a protective/risk factor.

Next steps

If the Security Quotient model can be fully validated through final analysis of the third stage survey responses and found to be repeatable there is the possibility that the approach could be used to target cybercrime prevention and intervention efforts to the subset of individuals at the greatest risk of victimisation.

Learnings from other risk based modelling approaches can also be used in future work to benefit from research efforts developed predominantly for commercial underwriting gains in the US personal, life and auto insurance markets and known links to other behavioural risks such as financial lending.

The advanced US lending and insurance markets have increasingly targeted indicative aspects of psychometric/behavioural relationships with claims histories and credit scores. Recent research has shown that both outcomes are influenced by sensation seeking/self control theories that match other OCEAN personality traits that can be measured using the CFC-F and DOSPERT-R scales.

Psycho-social (personality) and biochemical (biological and inheritable trait) links have increasingly been shown to predict risk-taking behaviour in one realm also maps to risk-taking behaviour in others. In our increasingly data-rich environments, insurers in the US are looking to leverage such data to evolve the insurance marketplace as predictors of loss propensity.

A big thank you goes to the ISACA Auckland board for the invite last week to present an update on my two year passion project to mitigate the harm caused by cybercrime.

As I noted on the day, the rather provocative session title – using the S word and TV show imagery – was chosen to keep people engaged for the always difficult post-lunch slot when audiences are fighting the urge to drift off into a light snooze as the body focuses on physical rather than mental digestion.

Presenting on the day felt like coming home – I originally gave a presentation at the November 2016 ISACA Cybersecurity Day on the need to move away from a model of being the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff and increasingly targeting prevention and intervention efforts towards a subset of individuals who may be at the greatest risk of falling victim to cybercrime and common socio-technical internet attacks like phishing.

Six years spent listening to horror stories around small businesses impacted by ransomware or Business Email Compromise incidents or of individuals emotionally and financially harmed by romance and investment scams has provided the drive to get this far and I hope the insights shared were of some interest to the audience.

The SeBIS and CFC-F scales appear to offer good ‘predictive’ insights where there’s a correlation with internet safety and security knowledge/ability and future focused behaviours. Eleven ‘Very High Risk’ (VHR) individuals were identified in the survey data, including four previous cybercrime victims who had lost up to $10,000. Combining the three scale scores via weighting or other means is now required to produce a final Security Quotient metric.

Thank You!

I owe a big thank you to all those who took the time to help promote the Security Quotient survey earlier this year to their networks and especially to those individuals who took the time to complete the survey and provided the very important data to draw from.

After promotion via mainstream and social media, through Google and Facebook PPC campaigns (thanks CFFC!), 167 responses were received. I will now be working with the University of Auckland to validate the preliminary findings I presented on identifying Very High Risk individuals via psychometric scales and the ‘Victor’ and ‘Victim’ clusters of behaviours.

Combining Safety and Security

As security professionals, we focus much of our efforts on securing data and devices, using risk assessments and security controls to protect information and information systems to provide confidentiality, integrity, and availability, to protect corporate reputations and share prices, to comply with standards and regulations, and to avoid punitive fines (#GDPR).

In this environment, end users – the ‘people’ in the three pillars of infosec – are often viewed as the weakest link in the security chain, too stupid, incapable or uninterested to count for much in a security programme, viewed often as a burden rather than a force multiplier to leverage when developing a stronger security culture.

The Security Quotient project has been firmly about securing and safeguarding people and to move on from a mindset of victim blaming.

What struck me last Thursday at the ISACA 2018 Cybersecurity Day was how the security world is evolving and how our historic focus on data and devices is also evolving to reflect the changing nature of technology itself and the increasing likelihood of harm potentially being caused by cyberphysical incidents and events.

Richard Harrison spoke about current and future digital crime in a healthcare context, of our increasing reliance on the integrity of data from connected medical devices and the future of healthcare implantables where cybersecurity will apply not just to connected devices but to connected people too.

John Martin’s talk on the current and future states of IoT illustrated how diverse standards and a lack of comprehensive guidance and regulation is leading to increasing risk as we connect anything and everything to the internet with little effort made to include security by design or default.

And, of course, Chris Roberts’ fantastic presentation on plane, train and agricultural cybersecurity was supplemented by his research into weaponising nanotechnology, hacking the human and how ‘brainwave’ authentication is only years away.

Next Steps

I remember being asked whilst interviewing for Deloitte “what is your proudest work achievement?” and talking about the development and operation of the ORB reporting platform. From small beginnings in August 2010 through to August 2016, the system enabled New Zealanders to report almost 28,500 incidents and record $35m in direct financial losses.

The platform provided a real time reporting dashboard and allowed partner agencies to stay up to date with incident trends; writing monthly intelligence reports for partners delivered a picture of the harm across NZ and allowed targeted educational resources to be focused where required.

I’ve taken the learnings from this experience at the bottom of the proverbial cyber incident cliff and want to build something that delivers an opportunity to prevent further harm from being caused to the most vulnerable. In a Security Quotient ‘product’ roadmap, now would mark the end of the Alpha phase with this harm reduction vision validated through prototyping and a Minimum Viable Product defined.

If the model can be assessed further with assistance from the University of Auckland, it should be possible to deliver a Quotient value through an online service that presents both a risk rating and guidance to the user at the end of the survey.

My next aim – after rapidly writing up the research completed to date – will be to build a ‘human vulnerability scanner’ on a par with the likes of Nessus or Qualys which work to identify risks through CVSS scores. If the Security Quotient predictive model can be further validated through statistical analysis, developing an online platform will give me a chance to return to delivering digital tools that provide real value to the user.

Ultimately, it would be great to also develop a ‘human firewall’ capability in the form of targeted education and/or an operating system with individualised, adaptive security that can wrap a more effective safety net around the internet user.

With cybercrime now more lucrative than the global drugs trade, developing predictive analytics to prevent internet users from falling victim seems more important than ever.

Can you help?

There’s no doubt that the small dataset is an issue for validating the predictive nature of the Security Quotient metric. If you’re a CISO, CSO, ISM or security practitioner interested in the concept and able to assist with getting a large NZ workforce involved, do please reach out: research@ubisec.nz.

Connecting to a current security culture programme or large phishing simulation dataset would be an interesting next step too.

A larger dataset could also allow respondent nationality to be assessed for evaluation of Hofstede’s cultural ‘Individualism’ measure as a protective/risk factor.

If a royal wedding watched by half the planet or the pending implementation of an EU privacy regulation doesn’t float your boat – 5 days to GDPR! – tomorrow New Zealand’s Prime Minister will address the crowds at Techweek in holographic form. Likely so she can keep up with work commitments and be in two places at once and who wouldn’t benefit from cloning themselves to stay on top of email.

“Help me NZ techies, you’re my only hope….”

Meanwhile the boffins at Google have taken decades of research into AI and computer speech synthesis and produced an autonomous assistant in the form of ‘Duplex’ that can book a hair appointment for you and sound uncannily real in the process. Parody makers start your engines…

The pilot survey requested basic demographics and used 62 questions from 3 psychometric scales to measure computer use, health and lifestyle factors and how they may shape risk appetite and risk perception:

Can we prove that a low score is predictive of being pre-disposed to socio-technical internet attacks?

The high-level concept being to generate a ‘Security Quotient’ score and to see if it’s possible to test for high-risk human behaviour and mitigate it through additional security controls or by educating people in a targeted manner to mitigate those risks.

Could personality profiling be used for more than just targeted advertising remarketing on search engines and social media? What if you could understand and quantify the nature of the people risk in your organisation as you can the technology risk?

Results from the pilot showed a distribution of scores from 28 valid responses with one anonymous respondent identified as very/high risk on two of the three scales:

To those attending, I summarised the next steps:

A larger survey dataset is necessary to validate the ‘average individual score’ concept of 60%.

Submissions by victims of cybercrime are required to validate the predictive ability of any such Security Quotient score.

Nationality should be captured in the full survey for evaluation of cultural ‘Individualism’ being a protective factor

2018 project delays

A mix of family commitments and a new role working in Deloitte’s cyber team has pushed back the final survey by three months. The race is now on to complete this second stage and write up the findings.

Whilst this initially left me feeling like Robert Scott beaten to the South Pole by Roald Amundsen (but without the cold and suffering), my reading of their work suggests the Security Quotient concept is still valid.

Dr David Modic’s team developed the StP-II scale with an initial 138 items based on significant research into scam compliance. They had used the 12-item Consideration of Future Consequences Scale and confirmed that self-control is an important predictor of various behaviours including victimisation. Lack of premeditation – thinking before you act – is a significant predictor of scam compliance. They also made use of the full DOSPERT-R scale (as opposed to just the recreational risk elements highlighted by Elie Bursztein’s 2016 research into USB drops) to evaluate individual risk preferences.

Read the full research and you find the eventual StP-II scale drops to 54 core items to measure susceptibility to persuasion. The best part is the test is now online so give it a go and see how your personality stacks up.

But please be sure to take the updated Security Quotient survey once the final tweaks have been made, hopefully later this month, I don’t want to suffer the fate of Antarctic explorers…

It’s been a while since I celebrated getting funding from InternetNZ to research the human side of cyber security and how individual personality traits might play a part in common ‘socio-technical attacks’ like phishing, ransomware and online scams.

I’ve digested mounds of academic research spanning fields as diverse as human computer interaction, risk management, health promotion and social psychology. I’ve read books and blogs on social engineering and scammer tactics and have assembled the first draft of a conceptual scale that might help identify ‘high risk’ individuals when it comes to common cybercrime and cyber security attacks.

Taking inspiration from the agile “move fast and break things” mindset, it’s highly likely this will be the first of many iterations of a research questionnaire but I’m keen to get feedback from some willing guinea pig volunteers.

If you have 15 minutes to spare and the enthusiasm to road test an online survey, please do get in touch by email to research@ubisec.nz or message me on LinkedIn and I’ll happily share a URL with you.

The survey looks at basic demographic details, computer use, health and lifestyle factors and how they may shape risk appetite with the ultimate aim being to vulnerability scan layer eight.

“We have perfected the art of finding problems without fixing real world issues,” he told attendees. “We focus too much on complexity, not harm.”

The human side of information security and associated online harms is a major focus for me. Between August 2010 and August 2016, New Zealanders reported almost 28,500 online incidents to NetSafe involving $35m in direct financial losses.

Think of the individual who has remortgaged their house; drained their business of operating capital; traveled to a hotel room thousands of miles away to meet that mysterious investor offering a handsome percentage in return for a small up front payment.

Those experiences at NetSafe left me wanting to find solutions to what are increasingly known as ‘socio technical attacks’. If you haven’t heard that term before I’ll refer to Dr Jean-Louis Huynen: “A socio-technical attack is possible because of the human components in a system.”

Over those six years working at NetSafe, the most common – and most financially and/or emotionally harmful – forms of socio-technical attacks were:

Romance fraud

Investment fraud

Ransomware

Business Email Compromise (BEC)

Whether you classify those as cyber-enabled or pure cyber attacks isn’t the important point here. The key is that in the majority of those cases, the weakest link in the system was often a human being – a human who responded to the charms of a scammer or was curious enough to infect their own system and encrypt essential data.

Humans, it’s fair to say, can be wonderful things but they also come with a range of inherent flaws or vulnerabilities:

Many of us like to help people: that could be holding a door open for someone wearing a hi-vis vest piggybacking into a building or allowing the helpful ‘Microsoft’ technician to have access to your computer to fix the viruses.

Many of us respond to outside forces or biases in the form of authority, curiosity or a general sense of invincibility and click on the malicious attachment or submit our credentials to the phishing site that ‘satisfices’ our need to verify it really is the official bank website.

What cyber brings to the picture is a speed of operation and ability to bridge the distance unimaginable for the criminals operating at the end of the 19th century. Speed and ease of operation and access to a global pool of victims equals profit and has resulted in changing the face of modern crime.

Look at the latest UK crime statistics and you’ll find that ‘cyber crime’ in the form of Computer Misuse and Cyber Enabled Fraud now makes up 53% of reported crime.

There’s no doubt that the technical skills involved in advanced, persistent, technically impressive attacks are to be reviewed with a wry smile and a sense of awe.

But it’s becoming apparent that a failure to implement basic cyber hygiene steps – not sophisticated attackers – is often to blame. And that includes failing to train your staff on how to recognise suspicious activity and how to respond to potential cyber incidents.

“A lot of the attacks that we see on the internet today are not purported by winged ninja cyber-monkeys. Attackers have to obey the laws of physics; they can’t do things that are physically impossible”

The wonderful people at InternetNZ have provided me with funding this year to explore some of the root causes of those 28,500 incidents, to research why so many socio-technical attacks are successful and to examine if there might be a programmatic way to identify individual cyber security risk profiles and deliver adaptive security benefits in future.

It’s only the start of the project, but I’ll be posting updates as I progress in the hope we can continue to explore ways to help more people stay safe and secure online.